In our modern era we often delight in thinking of ourselves as being more refined and civilized than our ancestors. They were barbaric, violent, and crude, whereas we are refined, civilized, and cultured. The truth is that despite our pretensions, the very opposite is true. Modern civilization is just as bloody, oppressive, and brutal as our ancient ancestors, if not moreso. One of the areas that this truth is so obviously demonstrated is in the case of how we treat children, the issue of abortion. The ancient Greeks and Romans, considered the pinnacle of refinement and civilization in Western history, abandoned unwanted children in the wild to die from exposure or be eaten alive by animals; often they literally threw them in their city’s trash heap to die among the refuse and garbage. Today we think upon these horrific ancient practices with revulsion while continuing them under different names in our societies. Dr. Ron Paul, who has delivered between 4,000 and 5,000 babies, wrote in his book Liberty Defined, about an experience he had while training for medical school that echoes very clearly the barbarism of the ancient Greeks and Romans:
On one occasion in the 1960s when abortion was still illegal, I witnessed, while visiting a surgical suite as an OB/GYN resident, the abortion of a fetus that weighed approximately two pounds. It was placed in a bucket, crying and struggling to breathe, and the medical personnel pretended not to notice. Soon the crying stopped. This harrowing event forced me to think more seriously about this important issue. That same day in the OB suite, an early delivery occurred, and the infant born was only slightly larger than the one that was just aborted. But in this room, everybody did everything conceivable to save this child’s life. My conclusion that day was that we were overstepping the bounds of morality by picking and choosing who should live and who should die. These were human lives. There was no consistent moral basis to the value of life under these circumstances
Liberty Defined, pg. 12 of e-book. He tells a more in depth version of this story in this speech from 2011.
Abortion is one of those “hot topics” that shouldn’t be so “hot.” It should be obvious to everyone that an unborn human is just that – a human being. Therefore, as a human being, it should be given all the rights and protections provided to all other human lives – such as the right not to be killed. After all, human rights are inalienable, meaning they cannot justly be violated, taken away, or surrendered and all humans have the same equal rights , including the right to Life. Abortion is antithetical to human rights, human life, and human liberty. Yet, there are still those who argue against this position and not only insist that people should be allowed to kill unborn children but that, sickeningly enough, this is something that they should “shout” about, that they should be unashamedly proud of killing children in the womb and that believing that doing so is good should be normalized. Often those who wish to defend the killing of children in abortions will try and argue that some form of science, ethical morality, or (more rarely from those on the political Left) religious tenet justifies their beliefs. So the question becomes, evaluating the question of abortion from the perspective of scientific facts, ethical considerations, and religious instruction, what should be the position of the Latter-day Saint on the issue of abortion, regardless of their political party affiliations? That I will answer below by evaluating each of these topics and what they have to say about abortion. Note that I will not be using such propaganda terms as “pro-choice” of my own accord. I will explain why in the sections on the ethical argument below.
The Science
The Atlantic has a good article about the way that science has been used to promote or defend pro-abortion positions and how recent scientific discoveries have transformed the way many people understand abortion which is helping to empower the political pro-life movement. Among other interesting observations, the interview also record a comment from Georgetown University professor of biomedical ethics Dr. Daniel Sulmasy, where he explains that:
openly pro-life scholars may have a harder time getting their colleagues to take their work seriously. “If an article is written by somebody who … is affiliated with a pro-life group or has a known pro-life stand on it, that scientific evaluation is typically dismissed as advocacy,” he said. “Prevailing prejudices within academia and media” determine “what gets considered to be advocacy and what is considered to be scientifically valid.”
This in and of itself is a serious admission. Neither scientific development nor scientists themselves are neutral on the issue of abortion. The community is biased towards abortion and their prejudices often determine what is promoted as being scientifically valid and what is dismissed, not whether the work being done was done well and according to scientific procedures or not. That is probably why you get rants like this in Scientific American that demands scientists bend their work towards supporting pure Leftist political causes. Little to nothing of the disagreement has to do with science and everything to do with the political biases of the scientists in question using their perceived authority as scientific experts to promote a decidedly partisan political agenda.
All of which makes this study very interesting and very important. In August of 2018, Dr. Steven Andrew Jacobs of the University of Chicago published the results of a study he had been carrying out that evaluated over 5,000 biologists from across all religious, political, and social backgrounds a series of questions about when they believed human life began. The story of his research and the trials he underwent to get it approved by his dissertation committee is almost as astonishing as the conclusions themselves. When he first broached carrying out his study he was repeatedly told by other scientists in academia that because he is a white male that he should not be researching this topic. When he eventually decided to go ahead with his work he recounts how he was vehemently attacked and one professor even “accused me of nefarious intentions and threatened to sabotage my work by telling other biologists to not participate in my study.” Jacobs, even found himself having to defend himself before the university’s ethic board for carrying out a study that asked acknowledge biologists when they believed, based solely on their objective knowledge, when life began.
The attacks continued with Jacobs being told by credentialed and respected biologists that, “my survey seemed like it was developed by the Ku Klux Klan; I was told that my work could expedite the extinction of the human race,” all for asking about what their answers to his questions were based on their scientific knowledge. You would think that kind of insanity would not be present in a class of people who pride themselves on being rational observers of facts. Jacobs kept many of the emails sent to him, which he provided to the interviewers, and they contained such comments as:
“Abortion has been legal for over 40 years. It’s time for all the religious nuts to get over it.”
“This is some stupid right to life thing…YUCK I believe in RIGHT TO CHOICE!!!!!!!”
“As a scientist, I agree that life begins at fertilization. But, as a citizen of this democracy, I support a woman’s right to choose. From that perspective, I adopt the opinion that life begins at first heartbeat.”
Isn’t that last response just incredibly revealing? The scientist actually acknowledged that he or she actively knows that it is a scientific fact that human life begins at conception but ignores that fact in order to affirm his or her political opinions. All of this only goes to prove Dr. Sulmasy’s claim from above that the those in the scientific establishment determine what is and is not valid science based on their political prejudices and not scientific rigor. The scientific and academic establishments place their political biases on footing at least equal to, if not greater than, scientific fact when it comes to abortion. The academic and scientific establishments promote scientific research that supports pro-abortion stances while attacking and actively suppressing any scientific research that they think might question their pro-abortion stances.
So, why was Jacobs’s work attacked so strongly by these scientists? Perhaps it is because so many of them were forced by it to admit the truth – that human life begins at conception, aka fertilization. Of the 5,500 biologists that he interviewed 5,212 of them said that it was a scientific fact that life began at fertilization, when the sperm cell enters the egg in the fallopian tube. Only 290 of them disagreed. In his study he used four separate questions that surveyed when the biologist believed human life began. Two of the questions were implicit, where he asked about when mammalian life began. The third was explicit, with him asking where does the biologist think science says human life begins. The fourth was simply open-ended, “When does a human life begin?” I have reproduced the charts of the answers he received below so that you can see the results for yourself. Note his usage of pro-choice to represent those who are pro-abortion.
That final chart is interesting all on its own. While you can see how being “pro-choice” or being “pro-life” can effect the ultimate conclusion the scientist gave to the open-ended question, it is remarkable that it is clear that the overwhelming majority of biologists who think of themselves as being “pro-choice” still acknowledge that science evinces that human life begins at fertilization. I think it equally remarkable that the neutral group, those with no feelings on the topic of abortion whatsoever, are so very close to the very pro-life group. This suggests the people whose political opinions are distorting their scientific acumen are not the pro-life or very pro-life people, an accusation that is replete in articles attacking pro-life positions. It is actually the pro-choice and very pro-choice people who are letting their political positions distorts their understanding of the scientific facts. In the end, the position most in according with scientific fact according to a vast majority of biologists, even to those that identify as being pro-choice, is that human life begins at fertilization. That is simply the science.
The Questions of Ethics
There are really about five major arguments used by pro-abortion advocates to try and defend their position. They argue that a woman owns her own body and therefore has a right to choose to have a child or not (this is sometimes referred to as bodily autonomy), that the unborn child is not a “person” even if he or she is a human and therefore has no rights, that making abortions illegal will only force women to get more dangerous illegal abortions and will not actually prevent most abortions, that in cases of rape or incest that women should be able to get abortions so that they have no connections to their abusers, and finally that medical necessity can demand that a woman has to get an abortion in order to save his or her life. Some of these have more depth to them than others, but we shall deal with each one in its turn and discover if they are convincing arguments for the pro-abortion position.
Bodily Autonomy
This issue sounds like a very convincing issue on the face of it. After all, even the most libertarian among us agrees that each person owns his or her her individual body and that only he or she is qualified to make decisions that effect his or her body. This is one major reason (among others) why libertarians and other voluntaryist types oppose laws that tell people what they can eat, drink, or wear. If you own your body then no one can tell you what to do with it. Those on the political Left (Leftists) and the political Right (Rightists) will often say they believe in bodily autonomy, but their policies put the truth to their lie. You cannot believe in bodily autonomy and then claim the authority to tell people what they can ingest, as Rightists do when they support the War on Drugs. And no matter how much Leftists declare their belief in bodily autonomy as a defense for abortion it becomes clear that they do not believe in bodily autonomy when they try and restrict what kinds of work you can do with your body, how long you can use your body to work, what kind of medical treatment you can or cannot get for your body, or what kinds of foods you can put into your body. It becomes clear that for Leftists the issue isn’t truly the defense of bodily autonomy which dictates defending abortion out of necessity, they have no problem telling you what you can or cannot do with your body. The reality is that they want to find everyway they can to defend abortion at all costs, even if it means trying to justify it using ideas they don’t truly believe in and thereby becoming contradictory and hypocritical.
Now, to the idea itself. Say you do believe in bodily autonomy and believe it supports abortion, arguing that a woman has the right to abort a child because the child is in her body and she can do whatever she wants with her body. This is fine as long as her actions don’t violate the rights of another person. You don’t have the right to violate another person’s rights. Thus, while I can eat, drink, or smoke whatever I want, the moment I hurt someone else then I have violated their rights and done something wrong. I can walk down a beach and collect coins I find lost in the sand, but the moment I take them from a woman’s purse by her towel I have exceeded my rights by violating hers – I have stolen her property. This idea has long been the basis for determining what should or should not be considered as an illegal act. If you violate the rights of another you have broken the natural law and are liable for your actions.
The concept of bodily autonomy is no different. A woman has the right to completely control her body until her actions violate the rights of another. Abortion is just such a violation. As described in the previous section, it is the overwhelming scientific consensus that human life begins at fertilization. As a human being in the child in utero has basic human rights, the same as all people do. Human rights are based on your humanity, the fact that you are a member of the human race, not on your location. To say otherwise would be to suggest that all it takes to make rape, robbery, plunder, torture, and vicious murder legal would be to move people to a place where we simply all agree those things could take place. This of course is nonsense and no one would agree to it. The same is true for the child in utero. Just because he or she is in a special place doesn’t mean that he or she has lost his or her inalienable right to life and that it is therefore okay to kill him or her. The woman’s right to bodily autonomy ends when it requires the killing of another human being because that killing is a violation of the right to life of that human child in her womb.
In fact, as the child in utero clearly has his or her own individual and unique physical form, i.e. a body. Therefore, the doctrine of bodily autonomy would dictate that the child’s body be protected from abortion as abortion would be a violation of the right of the child in the womb to have his or her rights to his or her body be protected from violence or violation. At this point I’m sure that the pro-abortionist argument would be that my assertion is crazy because at fertilization or right afterwards the child in question “is just a clump of cells.” This is both a silly and meaningless argument. All human bodies, from the moment of fertilization to the moment of death are “just a clump of cells.” To say one “clump of cells” has more rights than another “clump of cells” merely because one is more physically and mentally mature than the other is to argue that human rights are not inherent in our humanity but rather simply in our age. At that point you’ve effectively argued that it is okay to rape, torture, and murder people as long as they are below some arbitrary age limit you’ve chosen.
The more logical position is to argue that all humans, no matter what stage of physical or mental development they are in, have equal human rights that deserve protections by society, including those in the earliest stage of human maturity such as in utero children. Their bodies deserve just as much legal protections for their legal rights as anyone else. In fact, I find it quite puzzling that being pro-abortion is identified with feminism as feminism is supposed to be about defending the rights of every woman and yet at least half of all the victims of abortion are female children who have their life, their liberty, their happiness, and any and all contributions they could’ve made stolen away from them because they were slain in the womb. In that abortion takes away all of the rights of the woman being killed it is clearly anti-feminist in every way. No person who truly believes in protecting and promoting women’s rights could ever promote abortion, be pro-abortion, or call themselves “pro-choice” (itself a propaganda term as abortion is not about respecting choice but stealing the power to choose and every ability to choose away from the children being killed, making abortion about limiting and eliminating choice, not preserving it.) You’re either a feminist and are against abortion or you’re not a feminist.
Personhood
This insidious idea is often related to the “just a clump of cells” argument. The reasoning is that even if the child in utero is human it doesn’t matter because he or she is not a person and therefore doesn’t have any rights and anything can be done to him or her by the mother. Isn’t it interesting that every time someone is trying to say another human being isn’t really a person that it is always in the context of trying to rape, rob, or kill that person?
The solution is obvious. A human is a person. Maybe if we discover that aliens are real or if we truly invent artificial intelligence then we can have a meaningful debate over if you can be a person while also not being human but the argument is largely irrelevant in the extreme when it comes to abortion. Again, scientific evidence overwhelmingly concludes that human life begins at fertilization. As all humans are equal with the same inherent and inalienable rights, and children in utero from the moment of fertilization are living human beings, then they have the same rights as all other human beings. Whether they constitute “persons” under whatever inane idea of personhood an individual might hold is immaterial because human rights are not based on perceived personhood but actual humanity. You may not define a fetus as a person but it is a scientific fact that it is a human, and therefore as a human it has the same rights as all other humans.
Dangerous Illegal Abortions
While I am sorrowful when any human dies from anything other than joyfully in old age and surrounded by his or her loved ones, I have a hard time feeling like dangerous illegal abortions are an unmitigated tragedy. Think of it this way: If I told you that a shooter walked into a school, pulled out a gun, and shot a child, and then that gun blew up in the shooter’s hands killing him, how would you feel about the shooter’s death? Would you immediately demand that the US government pass laws making it easier for people to go into schools and murder children? Of course not. Such a thing would be preposterously stupid and immoral. So why should I feel any different that a woman who attempted to murder a child also died in the attempt? And why would I want to pass laws making it safer and easier for her to murder children? The whole line of thinking is fundamentally contradictory, irrational, and immoral. The logic is simple. Don’t try and murder children through abortions and you won’t ever run the risk of killing yourself in the process.
Plus, this argument ignores a simple fact. All abortions are dangerous. Even that so-called safe abortion kills a human being. At least two people walk into the abortion clinic. Only one walks out. The other leaves in a trash bag, or gets sold for parts. So this myth of the “safe abortion” that is in danger of being outlawed is an utter lie. Every abortion is violent, brutal, and dangerous. Every abortion kills a human being. Something that has a 100% kill rate is dangerous in the extreme, trying to spin it otherwise is mere apologetics in the service of slaughter.
Rape and Incest
The argument here is that rape is such a brutal and terrible violation that a woman should not be required to carry any child conceived by said rape to term because the link it creates between her and her rapist will be a constant source of suffering. That is a straightforward argument. It is also baffling nonsense. It is true that rape is a horrific crime and that it causes immense suffering in anyone who suffers it. But the commission of one crime does not justify another one. The fact that the father was a rapist does not justify the murder of the child who had nothing to do with the crime in question. The child in utero is, in every sense and meaning of the word, innocent – totally pure. To compound the first evil by committing as gross another evil does nothing to help anyone. It doesn’t spare the woman pain. It doesn’t harm the rapist. In fact it saves him from having to face even fuller repercussions for his actions and makes his life easier as it saves him from having to ever support said child. It is misdirected anger and rage that only increases the amount of evil and suffering on the planet.
In reality there are two victims when a rape occurs – the woman raped and the child conceived by said rape – and neither deserves to suffer more because of the evil actions of a third party. To argue otherwise is pure dehumanization. Former US Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, drawing upon his decades of experience as a medical professional, also wrote about the issue of abortion being justified by rape, saying:
Even if a child is conceived through rape, destroying it does not end the trauma. It does not deter the rapes. It does not blot out the women’s memory of the assault. It does not change her degradation in any way.
We must remember that half that baby belongs to her. It has part of her family no matter who the father was. The woman needs extraordinary care, but we should not add the guilt of killing her unborn child to all her other problems. Abortion is the same king of violence as was the rape. …Extraordinary relationships develop between the raped woman and her child when the pregnancy is carried to term.
Deception on Demand by Dr. Koop, reprinted here on pages 16 – 17.
On that topic, of the relationship between mother and child, Serrin M. Foster, President of Feminists for Life, writes:
When someone asks about exceptions for rape and incest, we must also consider how that makes those feel who were conceived through sexual assault. Well-meaning statements can hurt. As one UC-Berkeley grad student said to her pro-choice peers, “I have a right to be here.” They responded, “We didn’t mean you!” She asked, “Whom did you think you meant?” My mother told this story to a coworker who agreed and said, “People never think they are talking to an exception — like me.”
Could you look at someone conceived in violence and tell her that she never should have been born? What if it turned out to be your best friend — or a relative? Would that change the way you felt about her? Would you think less of her mother? Rebecca Kiessling, a young attorney and mother who was conceived through sexual assault, asks, “Did I deserve the death penalty?” Can you imagine if we ranked the value of people based on the circumstances of their conception?
Every human is valuable, every human is meaningful, every human is important and telling someone that they are subhuman, less human, inferior to you, not worthy of life because of who their parents may be? That kind of medieval idea should be left in our barbaric past, where it belongs. If there is any additional trauma in a rape victim carrying a child conceived in rape to term then the punishment for such trauma should fall solely on the shoulders of the the person responsible for such suffering – the rapist – not the innocent child.
I also find it interesting that people who so clearly understand that express consent is the difference between lovemaking and rape, and despise rape so completely because it violates the body of a woman by using it without her permission, have no problem perpetuating an equally violent violation of the body of the child in utero. Abortion, which literally penetrates the body of the fetus with medical instruments or rips it apart limb from limb, among other forms of abortion, are a brutal violation of the bodily autonomy of the child on a level greater than even rape. In rapes the women usually have the ability to continue their lives, possibly heal, and find true meaning again beyond their her trauma. In abortion there is no such chance. The body of the child is mangled, mutilated, and destroyed, before being thrown in the garbage or incinerator. Rape takes a part of a woman away that takes her decades to heal from, but she is still left with herself to be able to heal. Abortion takes away everything from the child and leaves him or her with nothing.
I’m not even sure what the argument with incest is other than an extension of the rape argument? After all, people willingly involved in incestual relationships will most likely not want to abort their children because of the incest itself. And in terms of rape, everything said above applies. A human life is a human life no matter the relationship of the parents. Perhaps the argument is that incestual relationships increase the likelihood that the child will have genetic developmental difficulties and might be born with a disability or deformity. If that is the case, if you think it is okay for you to kill people because they have a disability or deformity, as if by having a disability or deformity they have less of a right to life than children without disabilities or deformities, then not only are you repeating the barbaric arguments of the past but you are using the same reasoning that is the basis of the modern idea of eugenics.
Eugenics is the belief that humans should actively limit or prevent people with unwanted genetic qualities from reproducing or having children. Eugenicists saw their mission as one of mercy. By preventing the spread of “bad genes” they would not only “uplift” the “superior races” but they would save the “imbeciles” from a life of suffering and poverty before death. Therefore all mankind would be improved. How is it substantially different when a woman kills her child because she is afraid that the child’s bad genes will cause it to have a disability that will cause it to suffer in life, have a life of “low quality,” and then die? To decide whether someone should live or die based on their genetics and what it may or may determine about them is eugenics in its most primal form, whether you merely focus on how it will “uplift” your life or have the large goal to “uplift” mankind by your choice is merely a matter of scale not content. As Dr. Addrienne Asch et al. wrote concerning this issue:
Using prenatal tests to prevent the births of babies with disabilities seems to be self-evidently good to many people. But for many people with disabilities, the message implicit in the practice of abortion based on genetic characteristics is, ‘It is better not to exist than to have a disability. Your birth was a mistake. Your family and the world would be better off without you alive.’
The whole argument that one has the right to kill children in utero because of they may possibly or actually do have disabilities and deformities, no matter what the cause or origin of those deformities or disabilities, is dehumanizing and sickening. It is a belief unworthy of anyone who claims to believe all people are equal and have inherent worth and dignity that demands respect and acknowledgement. It is certainly unworthy of anyone who knows all others to be Children of God. And speaking of God, the idea that any human or group of people can judge the value of another person’s life, whether it last for 3 hours or 103 years, and decide that this other person’s life is worthy of continuing or should be extinguished is nothing but pure megalomania. No being but God alone could have access to all the knowledge necessary to make such a determination and no one but God would have the authority over the life of another to then decide to end it with or without that person’s permission. To claim that you can decide that another human’s life is of value or not and therefore whether you should be able to kill that other person or not is nothing but delusional arrogance, a god-complex masquerading as medical or social expertise.
Medical Necessity
If there is an argument for abortion, it is this one. The classical argument for when you can kill another person is when that person is actively trying to kill you. You can’t plan to go and just slit someone’s throat, that is murder. But if they try and slit yours and you stab them instead and they die it isn’t considered murder, that is self-defense as you have the right to defend your right to life. The same logic could be rationally applied to birth. Pregnancy is dangerous, but it isn’t always life threatening, so the mere fact that it could be life threatening isn’t enough to justify abortion just as you aren’t justified in blowing the brains out of every person you meet just because they could potentially do you harm. But what do you do when their is an active, proven threat to your life? It is extremely rare, about 1% of abortions are based on medical necessity according to this report from the the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute (see Table 2 on pg. 4). This is what led former US Surgeon General C. Everett Koop to remark:
Protection of the life of the mother as an excuse for an abortion is a smoke screen. In my 36 years in pediatric surgery I have never known of one instance where the child had to be aborted to save the mother’s life. When a woman is pregnant , her obstetrician takes on the care of two patients – the mother to be and the unborn child. If, toward the end of the pregnancy complications arise that threaten the mother’s health, he will take the child by inducing labor or performing a Caesarean section. His intention is still to save the life of both the mother and the baby. The baby will be premature and perhaps immature depending on the length of gestation. Because it has suddenly been taken out of the protective womb, it may encounter threats to its survival. The baby is never willfully destroyed because the mother’s life is in danger.
Deception on Demand by Dr. Koop, reprinted here on page 17.
In his book Choice: A Doctor’s Experience with the Abortion Dilemma, written by an abortionist to defend abortion, Dr. Don Sloan wrote on this subject say:
If a woman with a serious illness- heart disease, say, or diabetes- gets pregnant, the abortion procedure may be as dangerous for her as going through pregnancy … with diseases like lupus, multiple sclerosis, even breast cancer, the chance that pregnancy will make the disease worse is no greater that the chance that the disease will either stay the same or improve. And medical technology has advanced to a point where even women with diabetes and kidney disease can be seen through a pregnancy safely by a doctor who knows what he’s doing. We’ve come a long way since my mother’s time….
The idea of abortion to save the mothers’ life is something that people cling to because it sounds noble and pure- but medically speaking, it probably doesn’t exist. It’s a real stretch of our thinking.
Choice, pages 45-46.
But, let us say for the sake of the argument that it does happen – a medical problem arises where it becomes impossible to care for both the mother and the child and the child cannot be removed by Caesarean and cared for by medical science until health and developed enough to survive on his or her own. If the growing child does not get aborted he or she will kill the mother and abortion is the only option? In that singular case, one that almost certainly is far lower than even the 1% of cases as reported above, what is the ethical choice? Well, from the natural rights philosophy I can see the argument that the mother may then be justified in killing the child to save her life. That is, after all, the only time that taking another human life could ever be justified. But it would only be so in an incredibly specific circumstance and if followed would eliminate over 99% of all abortions.
Not only has medical science made it clear that human life begins at fertilization but as you go through all the ideological and ethical arguments for abortion over 99% of all abortion cases are eliminated by applying even the most basic ethical and moral principles to the issue. So, what about religion?
The Religious Question
For Latter-day Saints, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has clearly laird out its position on the issue of abortion and His Apostles have clearly taught the doctrines of the Lord concerning abortion.
First, the policies of the Church regarding abortion are clearly stated on its website:
In today’s society, abortion has become a common practice, defended by deceptive arguments. Latter-day prophets have denounced abortion, referring to the Lord’s declaration, “Thou shalt not … kill, nor do anything like unto it” (D&C 59:6). Their counsel on the matter is clear: Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints must not submit to, perform, encourage, pay for, or arrange for an abortion. Church members who encourage an abortion in any way may be subject to Church discipline.
Having an abortion, performing an abortion, helping someone to obtain an abortion, even encouraging someone to get an abortion, can make you subject to Church discipline, which would seemingly include excommunication. You could be stripped of your covenants and removed from the records of the Church for helping or encouraging someone to get an abortion. That is how serious this issue is for the Church, because that is how serious an issue it is to kill children.
The Church does allow for certain possible exceptions. Those namely are in cases of rape, incest, or medical threat to the mother or child. But it is also made clear that ” even these circumstances do not automatically justify an abortion. Those who face such circumstances should consider abortion only after consulting with their local Church leaders and receiving a confirmation through earnest prayer.” In other words, even in cases of rape or when a doctor tells a couple that their child will not survive birth that doesn’t mean they can just get an abortion and the Church would accept that. They must first counsel with their authorized and ordained Church leaders and if they do not do so and get an abortion they would face Church discipline. Only a revelation from God could possibly authorize such an act. And there is a good reason for it, as then Apostle and now Prophet Russell M. Nelson taught in his General Conference address Reverence for Life (which was repeated in 2008 under the title Abortion: An Assault on the Defenseless):
I remember well a couple who endured such an experience. The woman was only 21 years old at the time—a beautiful and devoted wife. In her first trimester, she contracted German measles. Abortion was advised because the developing baby would almost surely be damaged. Some members of her family, out of loving concern, applied additional pressure for an abortion. Devotedly, the couple consulted their bishop. He referred them to their stake president, who, after listening to their concern, counseled them not to terminate the life of this baby, even though the child would likely have a problem. He quoted this scripture:
“Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.”
They chose to follow that counsel and allowed their child to be born—a beautiful little girl, normal in every respect, except for total hearing loss. After their daughter’s evaluation at a school for the deaf, the parents were advised that this child had the intellect of a genius. She attended a major university on a scholarship. Now some 40 years later, she enjoys a wonderful life.
To deny life to an individual because of a possible handicap is a very serious matter. Policy consistent with that logic would dictate that those already living with such deficiencies should likewise be terminated. One more step in that tragic train of thought would lead to the conclusion that those who are either infirm or inconvenient should also be eliminated. Such irreverence for life would be totally unthinkable!
Doctors are not gods and have no omniscience. When we trust them over the Lord, when we ignore God for a worldly professional, we ignore the greatest Doctor, Scientist, and Healer of All and lean upon ignorance for darkness instead of Light for Illumination. If we do not counsel with God who knows why light will be lost from the world, what great life will be destroyed because of our choices made in faithlessness and fear. You cannot know what will happen and acting as if you and therefore as the arbiter of life and death is arrogance and hubris, not mercy and love. In Elder Nelson’s words “This war called abortion is a war on the defenseless and the voiceless. It is a war on the unborn.” One cannot wage war against the innocent, cannot slaughter the sinless, and think of him or her self as a Saint.
On issues such as the “right to choose” and bodily autonomy, Elder Nelson taught these truths:
When the controversies about abortion are debated, “individual right of choice” is invoked as though it were the one supreme virtue. That could only be true if but one person were involved. The rights of any one individual do not allow the rights of another individual to be abused. In or out of marriage, abortion is not solely an individual matter. Terminating the life of a developing baby involves two individuals with separate bodies, brains, and hearts. A woman’s choice for her own body does not include the right to deprive her baby of life—and a lifetime of choices that her child would make.
As Latter-day Saints, we should stand up for choice—the right choice—not simply for choice as a method.
On the issue of when life begins, Elder Nelson states that it begins at fertilization, “when two special cells unite to become one cell, bringing together 23 chromosomes from the father and 23 from the mother,” which puts him in the same group as the biologists in the study reported above. He equally dismisses philosophical sophistries designed to determine when personhood and “meaningful life” begin as “presumptive and quite arbitrary.” He ends his talk by testifying to the sacred value of all life and its purpose for being sent to the Earth:
Life is precious! No one can cuddle an innocent infant, look into those beautiful eyes, feel the little fingers, and kiss that baby’s cheek without a deepening reverence for life and for our Creator. Life comes from life. It is no accident. It is a gift from God. Innocent life is not sent by Him to be destroyed. It is given by Him and is naturally to be taken by Him alone.
In 2012, Apostle Dallin H. Oaks (now First Counselor in the First Presidency), gave a General Conference which addressed the topic of abortion talk titled Protect The Children. He taught that from “the perspective of the plan of salvation, one of the most serious abuses of children is to deny them birth,” and one of the main causes of this is the “great evil” of abortion. As he explains other evils that are done to children in addition to abortion he applies this scriptural warning to them all:
We remember our Savior’s teaching as He placed a little child before His followers and declared:
“And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me. But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea” (Matthew 18:5–6).
In a separate address, titled Weightier Matters, Elder Oaks addressed the argument from some that the Church’s position on possible exceptions based on rape, incest, or medical necessity as confirmed through revelation from God gained through counseling with church leaders and personal prayer means that members should be pro-choice, that is pro-abortion. To this argument, Elder Oaks responds:
Some Latter-day Saints say they deplore abortion, but they give these exceptional circumstances as a basis for their pro-choice position that the law should allow abortion on demand in all circumstances. Such persons should face the reality that the circumstances described in these three exceptions are extremely rare. For example, conception by incest or rape—the circumstance most commonly cited by those who use exceptions to argue for abortion on demand—are involved in only a tiny minority of abortions. More than 95 percent of the millions of abortions performed each year extinguish the life of a fetus conceived by consensual relations. Thus the effect in over 95 percent of abortions is not to vindicate choice but to avoid its consequences. Using arguments of “choice” to try to justify altering the consequences of choice is a classic case of omitting what the Savior called “the weightier matters of the law.”
…If we say we are anti-abortion in our personal life but pro-choice in public policy, we are saying that we will not use our influence to establish public policies that encourage righteous choices on matters God’s servants have defined as serious sins. I urge Latter-day Saints who have taken that position to ask themselves which other grievous sins should be decriminalized or smiled on by the law on this theory that persons should not be hampered in their choices. Should we decriminalize or lighten the legal consequences of child abuse? of cruelty to animals? of pollution? of fraud? of fathers who choose to abandon their families for greater freedom or convenience?
Similarly, some reach the pro-choice position by saying we should not legislate morality. Those who take this position should realize that the law of crimes legislates nothing but morality. Should we repeal all laws with a moral basis so our government will not punish any choices some persons consider immoral? Such an action would wipe out virtually all of the laws against crimes.
The religious question seems settled here. Just as the ancient Christians sought to save children from Roman trash heaps and raise them out of a sense of charity and love for all people, it is our duty to save children today from the evils of abortion and destruction. The modern Prophets and Apostles have clearly taught that being pro-abortion, or, if your prefer the propaganda term, pro-choice, is against the coammdnments of the Lord because it kills a human child and those that engage in it face Church discipline, including excommunication, here upon the Earth and even more in the world after this one if they do not confess their sins and repent of their evils.
Final Thoughts
Here I wish to address two other issues that did not fit within the context of the larger article.
The first is that pro-abortionists always accuse those who challenge abortion of being racist, saying that their decisions would negatively effect minority peoples, especially black women as they get more abortions than any other group. Here is a typical example. Go read it if you like. Now, let me ask you this question: Among all the handwringing about giving birth during a pandemic being so dangerous (and abortions during a pandemic aren’t) and the Black mortality rate, did they ever explain why a racist would want more Black children? I mean, presumably a racist would want there to be as many White kids as possible and as few children from any other race as possible and therefore racists would want to limit the amount of kids from other races, such as Black children, from being born. But being opposed to abortion brings about the exact opposite – it means the birth of vastly more Black children than ever before.
Exactly how many? Well, consider that 36% of all abortions are carried out upon Black women and that 474 Black children are aborted per every 1,000 live births. Of the 44 million children aborted since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, over 19 million of those killed have been Black. When you compare that to the amount of Black men and women killed by police officers every year (235 in 2019) it becomes increasingly clear that the most dangerous place for a Black child is not in front of a police officer’s gun but within his mother’s womb. Is increasing the Black population by 36% and adding over 19 million lives to the overall Black population, thereby increasing its political, social, and economic power sound like something a racist would do? Of course not! Only a deluded person would think that. Therefore calling those who challenge abortion racist is just an outright lie meant to manipulate people through propaganda. I mean, who sounds more racist to you – those who want to increase the Black population by hundreds of thousands of children every year and thereby increase its voting power, political power, and economic power or those who want to kill hundreds of thousands of Black children every year with the result of making the Black community politically, economically, and socially weaker than it otherwise would be? It seems crystal clear that the racism lies on the pro-abortion side, not with those who challenge abortion. Being pro-abortion, being pro-choice, is racist.
Secondly, the reader may ask, well if you believe all this then how would your propose to change the law? The answer to that question (perhaps counterintuitively to Elder Oaks) is decentralization. The more power local people have over the laws that rule them, the less influence people from outside their communities have over the community, the more that people can create meaningful laws that not only preserve the life of children in utero but help create a culture that values all human life and which can better help those in need. The ultimate goal would of course be the reinstitution of the Common Law as a system of voluntaryist law that originates in the Natural Law and not in legislation passed and enforced by the State. This would allow communities to form laws to protect children in utero where there already exists a Culture of Life in some degree and for those laws to peaceably spread as they prove successful and superior to pro-abortionist arguments and laws. This is the only way it can be. Laws do not create cultures, cultures create laws. Until we value human life then human life will not be protected and preserved no matter what laws exist. As Dr. Ron Paul argued, “I still think there is a time where the law doesn’t solve the problems. Only the moral character of the people will eventually solve this problem, not the law.” But as a step on that path, toward that goal, merely refusing the federal government’s claim to adjudicate cases that consider abortion laws and for people in the various states to reclaim their authority over their own lives and communities would natural lead to greater protections for the lives of unborn children as different locales, now free of federal influence, would pass laws placing greater restrictions on abortionist activities. It would be a giant leap in the right direction, imperfect as it may be.
Conclusion
It seems clear that from scientific arguments, ethical argument, and religious argument that no Latter-day Saint should, otherwise they are valuing their political allegiance over their allegiance to God’s revealed truth and commandments. There is no medical justification for abortion. Human life begins at fertilization, as an overwhelming amount of biologists have testified to based on their expert understanding of biology. The only possible ethical justification for an abortion is if they life of the mother is so in danger that there is no other way to save her life but have an abortion. All other ethical or ideological arguments for abortion fall flat and are fairly easily dealt with and dismissed. The religious argument is clear for the Latter-day Saint. The Lord has warned us through His Prophets and Apostles that abortion is one of the greatest evils perpetuated against children today and that the ideas behind it are poisonous and destruction deceptions and lies. The Lord teaches us to value each human life, that every single one is of great worth in the eyes of God should therefore be treated that way. Arguments that Latter-day Saints can be “pro-choice” fall flat when it is realized that one can be disciplined by the Church, even excommunicated, for simply encouraging someone to get an abortion. The pro-abortion position, and its valuing and promotion of the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Black children in what some African-Americans have termed a Black Genocide, is deeply racist while the position of those who oppose abortion is pro-diversity and more in accord with the truth that Black Lives Matter, all Black lives. The way to ultimately help end our social wide promotion of abortion is to create a Culture of Life that values unborn children and their humanity, their beauty, their purity, and their natural rights. To that end vast decentralization is a preferable step forward that trying to force one monolithic paradigm on total society. That way those who are ready to do so can begin immediately to protect the lives of children in utero while activists and those who value human life and work to spread a community of life along with the Common Laws that work best for everyone to the rest of society and the entire world. Then, in that day, our ancestors will look upon the way our society murdered its own defenseless young in the same way we look upon genocide and slavery – as overwhelming evils so wicked it is incomprehensible how anyone of any basic intellect or morality could have ever supported it.